This article was originally published on September 26, 2022, and has been updated with new information.
On a Thursday morning in 1982, a 12-year-old girl in suburban Chicago woke up feeling sick. Her parents decided to keep her home from school, and she took a dose of extra-strength Tylenol. Soon after she swallowed the familiar red-and-blue pills, her parents found her dead on the bathroom floor.
Later that afternoon in a nearby suburb, a 27-year-old man felt a muscle ache. He took several extra-strength Tylenol and collapsed. When he died that evening, his stunned family gathered at his house. His younger brother took several Tylenol and then passed the bottle to his wife. Both soon died.
In the coming days, three more women in the Chicago area died after taking extra-strength Tylenol. One of the victims had just given birth to her fourth child and turned to acetaminophen for relief. Another was a single mother raising two young boys. The last victim was a flight attendant who had just returned to Chicago and stopped at a drugstore on her way home to buy the bottle.
